NEA members, students and other school employees have the right to a safe and healthy school environment.
While the responsibility of providing a safe and healthy school environment falls mainly on the school district or other employer,
NEA local associations can play a key role in ensuring this environment for students and staff. Health and safety concerns,
including poor IEQ, safety, and stress, affect both students and staff making it an ideal organizing issue for a local association.
While much of our website gives you factual, research based information about many school health and safety issues, this page
is dedicated to giving you, the NEA member, the organizing strategies needed to resolve these and other problems.
Health and safety concerns are an ideal organizing issue for a local association.
- Health and safety issues affect almost everyone
- Poor health and safety is a key reason why school staff are unhappy
- Action leads to good outcomes for the local association
- Better working conditions – visibility
- Credibility
- Leadership development
- Member satisfaction
What is organizing?
- Organizing is mobilizing members to exercise their collective power to achieve mutual goals.
- Organizing is when individuals work together to create a power base for the purpose of achieving mutual
interest or collective self-interest.
- Organizing is about achieving change that will benefit members and their organization.
- Organizing involves the deliberate decision to challenge power with collective action.
Benefits of organizing
There are many benefits of organizing. In the short term organizing provides a tool to address everyday problems,
can help ensure job protection/security, access to healthcare, facilitate coalition building, and improve working conditions.
In the long term organizing provides immediate protection for concerted activity, fosters the ability for people to learn
about themselves and fully use their skills and abilities, provides an opportunity to rediscover history of struggle and resistance
and allows for individuals to relearn the skills of cooperation, collective action and support of one another.
To learn more about organizing and the different types of organizing contact your state association or UniServ director.
Organizing strategies
The following organizing strategies can help a local association successfully organize around a health and safety issue.
Please note that when first faced with a health and safety problem you should contact your building or association rep,
local president or your UniServ director to inform them of your concerns. Getting other members and the local association to support
the issue is a crucial step in beginning the resolution process. By informing these parties you begin the process of involving the
association so that research, work and decisions can be shared. This will prevent you from doing it alone.
It is also important to talk to other colleagues in your school to determine if they have similar health and safety concerns.
This inquiry could bring to light others who may be experiencing the same problems or similar problems that need to be addressed.
Don’t forget to talk to the school nurse (if one exists) to see if he/she might notice student health or absenteeism trends that could
be related to the problem.
Health and safety committees
Health and safety committees are the most important tool NEA members have to correct work related problems or issues
at your school. They can ensure that health and safety issues are being identified, prevented or resolved.
Health and hazard surveys
While human nature tells us when something is making us sick and common sense and a sharp eye can help identify hazards,
gathering evidence that will convince school management that the problems are real is almost always necessary.
The best way to collect information is surveys, interviews and observations.
School walkthrough
Conducting school walkthroughs will help you assess and pinpoint areas where building conditions and hazards might be
causing adverse health effects or comfort issues. Like administering health and hazard surveys, this strategy will assist you
in gathering the data that is needed to convince school management that problems exist.
Become the educated advocate
Becoming the educated advocate is an important organizing strategy when trying to identify, prevent or resolve health and
safety issues. It is important that the local association health and safety committee, joint labor-management committee,
or other health or wellness committee, explore legal options and remedies and arm themselves with information that may already
exist.
Recommend solutions
Once health and safety issues are identified it is important that the local association health and safety committee or
the joint labor-management committee assess the findings, prioritize concerns and recommend solutions and preventative
measures to the school district.